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Rio+20: A voice from Dhaka, Bangladesh

Ahmed Swapan Mahmud is an activist and researcher, and executive director and founder of Voice

guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 June 2012 10.21 BST

To meet the development goals, a human rights-based approach, gender equality, decent work, and environment and ecological protection should be at the heart.

Since 1992, the global economy has become more accumulative and centralised, which goes against the principles of sustainable development goals. A series of crises such as climate, food, power, energy and financial emerged due to overexploitation of natural resources, overconsumption and the capitalist nature of the economy.

Most of the world's resources are in the hands of around 5% of the richest people. Thus, in the past two decades, marginalisation – the rich and poor divide – has increased. So, the development goals must assert social and economic equality, and environmental protection. The green economy cannot solve the problem until the current architecture is changed.

Bangladesh has made economic progress with constant GDP growth of 6% in the past few years, but the rich and poor divide has increased and climate change becomes an issue that makes life more vulnerable than before.

Rio+20 must deal with how the international leadership comes to a consensus to resolve the crises and help the south, as they committed [to do] earlier, under the millennium development goals. A forward-looking vision for post-2015 should be at the core of discussions in Rio to deal with the unfinished business of commitments that global leaders made before.